Fables choisies, mis en vers par M. de la Fontaine. Nouvelle édition

12mo. pp. lxxii, 432, [2] (wanting one leaf (pp. 427-28, concluding the ‘Table’ and beginning the ‘Addition’). Signatures: a-c¹² A-S¹². Bound in contemporary mottled calf.

 

First and only Barbou edition, as edited by Jean-Félicissime Adry, and of inexplicable rarity. Due to their immense and immediate popularity from 1668 onward, the fables of La Fontaine were subjected to pastiche and imitation during the poet’s lifetime (d. 1695) and throughout the next century, often leaving open the question of which ‘additions’ to the canon were indeed fakes or forgeries. Charles Nodier, who himself edited the ‘Fables choisies’ in 1818, considered the problem in his classic ‘Questions de littérature légale,’ and settled for dismissing Simien Despréaux de la Condamine’s ‘Suite des oeuvres posthumes de M. de la Fontaine’ (1798) as being ‘unremarkable’ imitations, but these derive at least in part from much earlier Lafontainiana.

 

This little edition of 1806 is specifically cited by Nodier (and by Nodier’s recent editor Jeandillou: see Bib# 4103638 /Fr# 1640, p. 73) as containing – and in fact questioning – two suspect fables published in 1780 by Pierre-Louis d’Aquin de Château-Lyon (1720-1796), who said he found them in a portfolio. The 1806 editor, Adry, regarded these (properly) as questionable, but was reluctant to reject them outright, giving his reasons on pp. 430-32. Yet again, however, both texts can be found in versions of the Fables long preceding d’Aquin and Adry: the situation remains murky, and in need of bibliographical attention beyond that of Nodier, Quérard, and other 19^th-century editors.

 

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